


Lessons

by Erinya



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F, Female-Centric, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-21
Updated: 2009-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:46:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinya/pseuds/Erinya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River's a quick study.  Set vaguely post-Serenity (movie).  Written for the 2009 Femslash Ficathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wintercreek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/gifts).



****

I.

 

River Tam stands in the shuttle hatch, barefoot and poised as if to flee, her hair half-hiding her eyes. She says, “Teach me.”

Inara, trained to read faces and bodies, sees clearly the girl’s impatience, her eagerness, a barely contained excitement simmering under her skin. She can guess what River wants. She’s been observing its onset for some time, in the hungry way River looks at Simon and Kaylee, watches Inara herself sidelong from behind a fall of elflocks as she is doing now. But she says, calmly, “Come in, _bao-bei_. Teach you what?”

River steps into the shuttle. She moves, Inara thinks, as a skittish wild foal might when tempted by apples: with unselfconscious grace, setting each foot down with delicate care, her path indirect and apparently aimless as she circles closer. The Companion discovers she is holding her breath.

“Simon thinks I’m still a baby,” River says to Inara’s curtains. “Wants me to stay little sister forever.” Her eyes dart in Inara’s direction, then away. “He doesn’t understand.”

“Simon’s a smart man,” Inara says. “But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a great deal he knows very little about.”

“But you do.” For the first time since she appeared in the doorway, River turns the full force of her gaze on Inara, dark irises and darker pupils. “You know about love, Inara. Teach me.”

Inara forces herself to move, to breathe; under that intense gaze, her training has faltered. River is bare-legged and slender, milky-skinned and fey, a strange mixture of innocence and preternatural knowledge. “I wouldn’t say I know much about love,” she says. What does any Companion know of love? She thinks suddenly of Mal, how he both draws and repulses her, of his brutal words and hidden desperation; then, just as quickly, she pushes him from her mind. She is here, now, with River. Presence: it is one of the first lessons she learned as a novice, and one of the hardest to master. “My knowledge lies in the pleasure two people can find together, in one another.” She keeps her voice modulated, her posture relaxed. “Is that what you wish to learn?”

River nods, quick and sharp. Her eyes drop away again, to the floor, but she stands still. “Don’t want to learn it from a man,” she says, and a little shudder passes over her. It’s a question Inara hasn’t asked, with words or without, but the rest of the answer is written in River’s right hand clutching her left upper arm, her elbows pulled tight in to her body, half-hugging herself.

Inara doesn’t know what happened to River Tam before her rescue, before she rose out of that supply crate naked and shivering and half-mad. But she sees it sometimes, even with Simon, how River cringes from him when he holds the needle. Rough male hands are the last thing River needs.

She rises and goes to the girl, reaches out to tip up the pointed little chin, caress the wild fall of hair out of the fine-boned face until once again, she can look into River’s eyes.

“The first lesson of pleasure,” she says, “is how to receive it.”

She takes River’s hand and leads her to the bed.

****

II.

They’re laughing, squirming and breathless on Kaylee’s bunk, River gasping as she curls on her side, convulsing with mirth. And Kaylee feels this bright feeling, joy swelling up inside her until she’s fit to burst. She wraps an arm around River’s waist, embracing her, and leans over to kiss her cheek. “Oh, _mei-mei_ ,” she says. “Sisters forever?”

River smiles, pressing back against Kaylee, their fingers twining together, and Kaylee’s thinking about how nicely their bodies fold into one another, back to front this way. River’s dress has ridden up, revealing her long, supple legs; she’s beautiful, blooming since they’ve put Miranda long behind them. Kaylee wonders if that’s all it is. Something’s changed in the younger girl. She’s free-like these days, lighter, and she walks like she’s dancing. Kaylee wishes she could walk like that.

When River half-turns towards her and says, almost solemn, “Don’t want to be your sister,” Kaylee’s taken completely off guard. Even more so when River snakes a slim arm around Kaylee’s neck and kisses her full in the mouth. She’s certainly taken too much off guard to do anything but kiss River back.

River’s not the first girl Kaylee’s kissed, but she’s the best in a long while. Kaylee stops being surprised after a few seconds and focuses on learning her mouth, discovering the soft sounds River makes when Kaylee kisses her deep and slow. River has drawn one knee up, revealing even more pale thigh. Kaylee ghosts a hand up towards River’s wayward hem and River drops her leg open slightly. That one small movement, so sweet and willing, has Kaylee wanting so much she’s wet already between her own thighs.

“Simon’s not here,” River says, with that way she has of answering the questions Kaylee hasn’t even gotten around to remembering to ask yet.

“ _Dong ma_ ,” Kaylee breathes. “River, I never thought…”

“In this situation,” River says, “thinking is unadvisable.” And she pulls Kaylee down for another kiss, licking her way into Kaylee’s mouth this time.

Kaylee decides it’s the most sense she’s ever heard from River Tam.

****

III.

_The second lesson of pleasure is how to give it._

River remembers Inara’s words as more than sound. As touch, Inara’s sure hands guiding hers to the soft skin of Inara’s breast. As sight, the rosy-dark bloom of Inara’s areolas, smooth skin crinkling at River’s touch to peak the nipple hard and erect. As smell and taste, salt-skin and the sweet-sharp aroma of Inara wanting her. Proteins and pheromones. Evolutionary scent-markers.

“The clitoris is an oddity of human physiology,” River murmurs against Kaylee’s hip. She trails her fingers down to search out Kaylee’s, feeling and listening for the quick indrawn breath under her cheek. “It has no evolutionary purpose.”

Kaylee just moans, and River raises her head to look at her, moving her fingers lazily. Kaylee’s cheeks are flushed, her head tipped back, her hair spread out on the pillow and quickly tangling. Her hips buck up under River’s hand and Kaylee says her name.

“More,” Kaylee says, she’s begging now, and River is surprised. Inara likes a slow, light touch, to be teased to the brink and then gently dropped over. Kaylee wants something different, so River experiments. She dips her head down into Kaylee, drinking deep, but it’s still not enough.

“Tell me,” she says finally, looking up, and Kaylee says, gasping, “Inside me. Your fingers….please.”

River reaches. Kaylee is hot and soft and slippery and tight, and when she falls apart around River’s fingers, whimpering, River almost comes herself, though no one’s touching her just then.

She thinks giving and receiving were never two separate things, the way everything separate is really connected when you look at it right, pleasure and pain, death and life, the black and the stars, and Kaylee and River lying entwined together in Kaylee’s bunk. Their skins know better than that and now River knows it, too.

She thinks she’s just learned a new lesson.


End file.
